She Faded Like the Sunshine From His Life
by ninjafightmaster
Summary: Oliver knows his life is plagued with ghosts. That has to be why he keeps seeing her everywhere he turns.


_**She Faded Like The Sunshine from His Life**_

She's been dead a year, three months, six days, nine hours, forty seven minutes and thirty nine seconds.

Oliver knows the moment she took her last breathe down to the second because in a lot of ways (or at least all the ones that mattered) that was when he drew his last as well.

The thing was, the terrible, awful, tragic and stupid truth was that he hadn't realized it until she was bleeding out in his arms. When his gaze met hers, as the life seeped out of those vivacious bright blue eyes and he found himself looking into a mirror to the person he wanted to be, at the life he desperately craved. He remembers the devastation, the numbing inundation of emotions that burst through all of his emotional barriers sweeping away every remnant of the restraint he had in keeping her out of his heart. In that moment he realized that this girl, this beautiful, shining beacon of hope, was the light of his life and she was dying in his arms.

She'd looked up at him through her teary eyelashes, and he could see how she saw him. He could see that she'd always seen him. The true man beneath the mask and he could see that she was in love with him for some crazy reason. Felicity Smoak loved him.

And in that moment of heart wrenching clarity he realized that he loved her too. Irrevocably, completely, entirely. He didn't know when he had fallen in love with her and he didn't how, but he had.

"Don't," he'd said. Don't give up. Don't die. Don't leave me alone. Just don't. What he should have said was _I love you, don't leave me I don't know how to live without you_. But the only word that had left his mouth that he could formulate on his sandpaper tongue was _Don't_.

Her lips had parted, as she sucked in a shaky breath, her green polka dotted nails flexing around his large callused one where he gripped her like a life line, or like his grip was the line tying her to life. She blinked rapidly as though clearing her vision and with her last breath she'd whispered one thing "Don't run." And he'd watched as that bright light faded from her eyes stealing the sunshine as it went.

And for all intents and purposes that was the day that Oliver Queen died.

He looked down at the half empty whiskey in his hand and closed his eyes, shaking off the images of her blond halo of hair streaked with blood, or the way her eyes had looked glassy and sightless as they truly looked through him for the first time. God, she'd stopped seeing him when she was dead.

How fucking sick was that?

She'd always been there, always loved him and always accepted him until the day that she had died.

And he hadn't even told her he loved her back, all he'd been able to choke out was "Don't" .

"Want another?" a voice said breaking through his haze of misery.

Oliver looked up at the bartender. He thought his name might be Rich, not that he'd bothered to actually look at his nametag. He'd been in this bar so much for the last few months that he'd picked it up second hand.

He spent a lot of his time drinking these days, just not at the Verdant. There his sister could monitor is alcohol intake and cut him off before he had "too much". It pissed him off considering whenever he drank he wanted to get _drunk_. Mind numbing, reality blurring wasted because that was the only time he could stop thinking about her and the only time he didn't feel like he was being ripped apart from the inside. The only time he could breath, even if they were shallow breaths.

Oliver shook his head at the man, and threw a wad of bills down on the table. His watch read three o'clock and he figured he'd waited long enough for his mother and sister to give up on waiting up, and go to fucking sleep.

He was really tired of coming home to the cavalry at night, there worried eyes and pursed lips making him feel even shittier than he already did. He knew his drinking bothered his family, just like he knew it had bothered them how far he had receded into himself the past year. They were worried about him. He understood that, and maybe deep down somewhere in the smoking carnage of his broken heart he appreciated that, but usually all he could muster up was annoyance.

It was his life, he could waste it if he wanted to.

Oliver stumbled from the bar stool, ignoring the side eye he was getting from Ryan or Rich or whatever his name was. He was too intoxicated to think straight let alone drive, but Rich the bartender never said anything and that was why he kept coming back.

He really didn't care if he crashed his car anyway. He didn't care period anymore.

He staggered through the bar and too the door, cutting through the small throng of dancers who occupied the tiny dance floor. This bar was not that big, nor that popular but it did seem to bring in the same little crowd most nights, so it was moderately packed on this Friday night.

Oliver almost snarled when someone bumped hard into him from the side. The person used enough force to send him stumbling backward a few yards, enough force for him to feel it was intentional in his alcohol soaked brain. He turned around ready to fight, but when he turned the person whoever had bumped into him was gone.

He swallowed his anger, and kept staggering to the door. It wasn't until he got to the parking lot that he realized his keys were missing.


End file.
